


Falling Star

by nesrynfaliq



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: (lest you think this was my idea), ACOWAR, Angst, Character Death, F/M, Prompt Fill, Sadness, and I am nothing but sadness, angst angst angst angst angst and pain, post acomaf, this fic is nothing but sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nesrynfaliq/pseuds/nesrynfaliq
Summary: Prompt: Elucien + death. Set late into ACOWAR. Elain and Lucien have not met since their fateful encounter in the throne room at Hybern. Yet as the war draws to a close, battle brings them together for their second and last meeting. Elain's POV. 
Teaser: ‘The first time they meet is in an echoing throne room, full of blood and tears and shattered screams. And she dies.The second time they meet is on a churning battlefield, empty of life and feeling and peaceful silence.’ And he dies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry.

The first time they meet is in an echoing throne room, full of blood and tears and shattered screams.

And she dies.

The second time they meet is on a churning battlefield, empty of life and feeling and peaceful silence.

 And he dies.

****

Elain turns with a gasp at the flash of colour just visible at her side. Silver and red burn together in a shooting star that bursts into life before her eyes. When she had been a child her mother had encouraged her to wish on the falling streaks of light that had so entranced her. It had only been later, when she had grown up and been left half an orphan that she had learned those stars never made it to earth. They were dying. Exiting their existence with one final flare, leaving a mark upon those who had seen and remembered their ends.

She looks down at her feet to see that this shooting star has landed right before her. A twisted creature from Hybern is crawling away from her, trailing silver blood, dying. It won’t last long and her eyes drift away from it, over the churned, bloody earth until her eyes alight upon it. The blade the beast had raised to strike her down glints dully where it’s lodged in the chest of a High Fae who is slumped by her feet, red hair mixing with the pool of dark, crimson blood that’s slowly spreading from his body.

With a small gasp Elain drops her to her knees beside him and gently rolls him onto his back. He wears the wrong colours, Spring colours, Hybern colours but...But he had saved her life. An enemy but...But she can’t just leave him like this, wounded and afraid. She’s drawn, compelled by something deeper than reason, deeper even than instinct, to look upon his face, the face of the male who saved her life and she crouches down by his side in the slick mud that’s slowly being poisoned by drops of deep scarlet.

His chest is heaving violently as he tries to drag air into lungs that are slowly being flooded, drowning him in his own life blood. The sword pierces between two ribs, plunging deep into him and the sight of it makes her heart lock and stutter. Fatal.

With trembling fingers, she pushes his thick, copper hair gently to one side so she can see his face.

One eye of russet and one of gold metal meet her own shocked dark brown gaze.

 Him. It was him. It was _him_.

That...Thing inside her, the thing that had come alive when she had been Made all those long months ago is telling her so. She had almost forgotten about it, had almost convinced herself that it wasn’t real, that it didn’t exist.

 It had whispered to her sometimes when she was scared or alone. It had soothed her broken dreams and made them soft and peaceful again when she had screamed in the night. It had tugged at her sometimes, when she let herself go quiet, when she let herself forget to always keep her guard up. It had always been there, murmuring under the surface, like a current beneath a still lake. She had almost forgotten that it connected to someone; that it connected her to him.

Her hands are shaking violently and already faintly stained with blood as they murmur over the deep wound in his side. It’s beyond her abilities to heal, beyond perhaps anyone’s abilities to heal. Terror grips her, its arms like a death blow, shocking her with the weight of it, the suddenness, how...cold she feels. Her of all hope and warmth trickle from her at the same rate the ground drinks his blood. A battlefield, always wanting more, never sated, never done.

She wants to scream. She wants to dig her fingers into her hair and scream and rage and unleash herself upon this world for its cruelty, for its vile, insatiable hunger, its need to take and take and take and never be done. The emotions are so strong, so overwhelming that it rocks her and terrifies her. She has watched so many people die over the course of this war. Why should it be he that breaks her? Why should he inspire so much terror in her? Why should she feel that if she doesn’t save him then this war won’t be worth fighting in, won’t be worth winning, wont’ be worth surviving at all?

_Mate_ , that thing inside her whispers, _mate, mate, mate_. Like a drumbeat, the drums that call the armies to fight, that urge them into battle, to charge, to run, to fight, this urges her to run, to find help, to find someone, anyone, to save him.

Scrambling to her knees she makes to push herself to her feet, to plunge back into the fray in search of help, in search of hope, to scream, to do whatever she has to do to attract the attention of someone who can help. Mor perhaps, or Feyre, Feyre could heal him, Feyre could fix this, could put it right she-

Elain feels a soft tug on the sleeve of the shirt she wears under her armour. It was too big for her and peeks out slightly beneath the plate and scale she wears, a little skirt of pale blue. It’s stained now with a whisper of red from Lucien’s bloody fingers. The pull on the fabric, feeble but strong enough for her to feel, stops her and she turns to look down at the male who has just saved her life.  

His remaining eye is wide, a ring of white showing around the deep russet he’s plainly terrified. When she meets those eyes again the bond between them burns and she feels what he feels. Death lingers about him, its cold breath upon his neck, its arms slowly starting to wrap around his chest, like cool mist creeping over an empty landscape. Mist cannot be fought or reasoned with or halted. It simply comes, inevitable as the dawn or the darkness. And it has now come to claim him.

He knows that there is nothing she can do for him. He knows there is nothing anyone can do for him. He knows that he is dying. He just does not want to die alone.

Obliging him this last wish, this last thing that she can give him, Elain sits down on the field beside him. This male she has only ever met once before in her life. This male who should have meant more to her than anything in this world. This male she has heard so much about, so many stories from so many throats and none of them have ever told her half as much as looking into his eyes and letting herself feel that bond between them does now.

This male who is covered in scars now, scars she did not know he had. They had told her so much about him, so many half truths that now, looking down into mismatched eyes she had almost been convinced to hate, feel like lies.

They had told her he was faithless, a traitor, who had switched courts and turned his back on a friend; her sister, when she had needed him most. But they had not told her that he had had no choice. They had told her he was a coward who flinched at the sharp crack of a whip. But they had never told her how he had been flogged. They had told her he always seemed so afraid of everything and everyone. But had not told her that in feeling that, and in continuing anyway, was what made him brave. They had told her he was selfish. But they had not told her that had been the only way for him to survive.

They had not really known him, this male who is dying in front of her because he saved her life. She who is as much a stranger to him as he is to her. And he had died to save her. His mate. A word that she still doesn’t understand, despite the fear that grips her as she watches him struggle to breath, feels, _hears_ , his heart stutter inside his chest.

 For the first time in her life, Elain wants to go back. Always she had adapted, always she had looked forwards, hopeful, into the future. But now she wants to go back, she wants to go back and she wants to change everything. She wants to get to know this male bleeding before her. She wants to understand what he might have been to her if they had been given that time, that chance. A chance she should have demanded and seized with both hands.

Breathing heavy and cracking he looks up into her eyes with such fierce intensity it feels as though every bit of strength he has left in his body is going into this, into her. He is studying her the way she has seen Feyre study the things she means to set down onto canvas, the details she wishes to capture and preserve and keep forever.

Except he does not have paper or paints or brushes, nor does he have the time to use them. He only has his eyes with which to capture her and only his ragged, broken soul to place her image on to, and only moments in which to do so. Yet he studies her so closely, eyes following every line, marking every curve, every freckle, every spatter of mud or blood that mars her skin. He studies her as though this may save him, as though she might be his salvation, as though committing her to memory and keeping her safe within his heart might cleanse him before his end.

Slowly, his eyes still drinking in her face, still drowning in her gaze, he lifts a trembling hand to her. She remains still, as though he has placed her onto this world in paint, freezing her in this moment with him as the battle continues to rage around them but leaves them untouched, as though whatever fates that govern this world have chosen to be merciful, to give them this, this last moment, this last chance to say goodbye. Even though they never really let them say hello properly.

The tips of his long, bloodied fingers gently scrape her cheek, trembling to settle there, cupping her face as he stares up at her with awe and wonder on his face as though she’s the most incredible thing he’s ever been fortunate enough to see.

The moment his fingers brush her skin she gasps as something shocks through her. It feels like fire, catching on the spark that’s struck between them when he touched her and it blazes through her nerves, into her heart and then deeper until it finds her soul and fills it.

And she knows then. She _knows_. She feels what he had felt in that throne room when he had watcher her die and return, had held her in his arms and had been forced to let her go. She knows exactly what song had begun singing in his blood when his eyes met hers and those words whispered out of him. It now sings to her too.

“You’re my mate,” she whispers to him, her eyes wide and slowly filling with tears as she looks down at him and understands, truly, for the first time, what that means, what he means to her. What she’s losing. A faint, tremulous smile dares to spread across his lips as he looks up at her, nodding faintly.

She raises her hand and tangles his fingers in her own as the strength fails him and fades from his arm and it falls away from her. She catches it and holds it tight, squeezing to let him know that she’s there, that he’s not alone. She’s with him now, where she should have been before, where she belongs.

A trickle of blood seeps from the corner of Lucien’s mouth and Elain deftly wipes it away with her sleeve, her eyes on his. There’s so much pain and darkness in him, so many scars that line his body and his heart and his soul. But when he looks at her...They lighten. And the demons that scrabble for purchase within him go quiet and shrink back to watch, giving them this moment alone. She finds the light that’s still in him, the light that no-one else tried to find or bothered to bring out in him. And she feels her heart break because she realises that no-one else will ever see this, will ever understand it, or him.

In that moment, as her heart shatters itself for him, she makes her decision.

Softly stroking her shaking fingers through his long copper hair, Elain whispers again, “You’re my mate.” But the words this time are soft, not mere shocked realisation, but also sures acceptance as she nods to him when his eyes widen in disbelief.

His chest is rising and falling rapidly now, his breaths shallow and strained and she grips tightly onto his hand, squeezing it as he struggles to form words for her. “You’re...m- my...mate,” he whispers back. She nods to him, unable to speak past the lump in her throat as she watches a single tear leak from his remaining eye, sliding down his cheek, carving a path through the blood and filth that’s spattered across his pale skin.

A soft smile brushes his lips at that and Elain nudges in closer to him, staying with him through it all, trying to soothe him as his breathing becomes harsh and fear fills his eyes. She holds his hand tight in hers right to the end and only once he’s gone does she let herself start crying freely.

The grief that twists deep inside her as that bond is broken, broken before it was ever truly forged, before it was ever truly known, does not feel alien or strange. It does not feel as though it comes from without, as though some invisible, unknowable connection forces the emotion upon her. She grieves for him, for this male- _Lucien_ – her mate.

Who she will never know. And who no-one else upon this blood soaked battlefield seems to mourn. But she will, she will mourn for him, for everything he might have been, everything that was broken, and everything that has been lost here, in a quiet, unknown corner of a war torn world. Where he died to save the mate he loved without ever being allowed to properly know.

War brought them together and war kept them apart, let them know of each other without ever letting them know or find each other until now, until it was too late, until it took him away from her. For that, for him, for them, she lets herself weep.

She doesn’t look away from him. She doesn’t leave his side, remaining in the blood drenched mud next to him. Still holding his hand. Still whispering those words as though she could bring him back, as though they might bring him back, might grant them the time they were denied together.

“You’re my mate,” she whispers to him, tears dripping down onto his body. “You’re my mate,” she tells the wind that steals her words away, heedless as whatever gods who have now claimed him, who somehow needed him more than she did. “You’re my mate,” she whispers into the horrific, hollow void within her heart. “You’re my mate,” she chokes, pounding her hand against his chest as something deep within her adds _and you belong with me._ “You’re my mate,” she gasps, as pain constricts her chest and makes it almost impossible to breathe. “You’re my _mate_.”

She doesn’t stop until someone approaches her from behind and tries to draw her away with surprising gentleness, murmuring her name, telling her what she already knows, what she’s weeping for in the first place. He’s gone. He’s gone and there’s nothing she can do now to save him. Feyre’s arms wrap around her, stroking her hair, holding her, trying to hold herself together too as she stares down at the male she had once considered her first and only friend in this strange, alien place.

At first she shakes her head, shakes her off, pushes her away and clings to him. She doesn’t want to let go of his hand. She doesn’t want to leave him. Not again. Not again. It seems important that she stay here, that she stay with him, though she doesn’t know why. The battle seems to be over now and even if it weren’t, there’s nothing she can do to protect him now; nothing to protect him from...

 Others are starting to gather around them. The other mates who found their soul partners and were allowed to love them, to be with them, as she and Lucien were not. She does not want them here, does not want their pity, does not want them looking down on him where he lies, bloody and broken. The Spring colours he wears tell them one thing; he was their enemy, a death that should be celebrated. But the way she holds his hand quite another. In the end, he may have dressed himself in Hybern’s clothes but his heart and sword and life had been sworn to her.  

She does not want to let him go.

Feyre had moved away when she did nothing but snarl at her not to touch him, to leave him alone. This time it is Nesta who crouches down beside her and tells her, in a voice that is surprisingly soft and sad, that she is sorry. Then she promises that they will take care of him. Elain lets her when she coaxes her away this time. She finally lets go of Lucien’s hand as that awful, crushing reality settles over her like a death shroud, suffocating and oppressive.

 “He was my mate,” she whispers numbly.

Now he’s gone. Her mate is gone. And nothing lives beyond death. Not even a mating bond. Her soul is empty, echoing, silent. That bond is broken. And there is nothing that can ever fix what’s been shattered inside her.

*****

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am even more sorry.


End file.
